PHOTOGRAPHER: ESI MONGO | STYLIST: STEPHANIE HUMPHREY | CREATIVE DIRECTOR: JEDIDAH M. | SET DESIGN: REMA KAHSAY | MUA: ANGELA JOAO
"I just kept knocking on doors until I found someone that would say yes."
Twenty-three-year-old, Lotanna Ezeike, entrepreneur and founder of the UK’s #1 Influencer App – XPO, created a solution for influencers to get paid in less than 24 hours, instead of waiting for the usual 30 – 120 days. We sat down with him to discuss his journey thus far, what he has learned along the way and next steps for XPO.
PWR:
Describe yourself in 3 words.
LE:
Resilient. Fun. Ambitious.
PWR:
What does resilience mean to you and can you share an experience where you had to be resilient?
LE:
Turning a bad streak into an okay one. When we were raising investment for our start-up, our first outside investment, we reached out to a number of investors. A lot of them said no and it’s very easy to take it very personal and be like ‘hey, they didn’t like me’ because everyone always feels like they have the million-dollar idea in their head but a lot of these things is just business. I just kept knocking on doors until I found someone that would say yes. We received a ‘no’ 147 times and only 1 yes. We then went back to the 147 who said ‘no’ and told them we had received our ‘yes’ and turned some of the ‘no’ responses to yeses...
PWR:
What are you looking forward to when lockdown begins to ease?
LE:
To actually enjoy my time, go to restaurants and bars. I also do a lot of start up investments now, so I specifically invest in new fashion lines, especially run by black women. I’ve done about three or four this year so far and that’s doing really well, the numbers are looking really good...
...I told them ‘hey this is what is happening, we have one person in, this is the last chance to get on board’. We created that ‘fear of missing out’ for them and then we were able to get a few more on board..."